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We've Been Played for Saps, Folks: Boehner Bill Will Become Reid Bill!

RUSH: I think we've been played for a bunch of saps, I mean not us exclusively, I just mean the whole country, the Republican Party, ruling class. I'll explain as uncomfortable as it is and as grading as it is.

Where are we on the debt deal? I suspect that most of the people, and this is what a lot of people are relying on, "Just finish it!" A lot of people are sick and tired of hearing about it, let's move on to something else. "I'm tired of talking about it. Can't we do something that's fun? What the hell is going on?" I understand the sentiment. Yesterday or last night the Republican leadership succeeded in getting Allen West to flip and vote for the Boehner plan or to commit to it. The same thing with Paul Ryan, and I've had a lot of e-mails: "What's Allen West doing? I can't believe Allen West, of all people." These Democrats, folks, you have to understand who we're dealing with here. This whole thing with Debbie "Blabbermouth" Schultz going on the House floor and accusing West of wanting to cut Medicare and Social Security and all that in the south Florida district, and you remember the contretemps that begin with West responding to it and so forth. They have put his re-election into play and, of course, they've got the media on their side down here in south Florida.

So all over the media is the allegation that Allen West wants to do all this damage to senior citizens and so forth so that's how his vote gets -- I'm guessing. I haven't spoken to him. But I think that's a large part of it. Now, as we all know the Boehner bill is not ideal. It's another one of these eight hundred, nine hundred, I don't even think it gets to a trillion, but let's say it does, a trillion dollars in cuts over 10 years, the debt limit raised immediately so the spending occurs immediately, but it re-invites the debt limit debate all over again in a few short few months and in fact there is from the Daily Caller today a story that says the GOP is stealing Christmas. The Democrats are going back to the Gingrich that stole Christmas theme from the Clinton days. And here's the story from the Daily Caller: "GOP Aims to Gut Christmas, White House Alleges -- House Speaker and national grinch John Boehner is planning to spoil Christmas, White House officials are claiming, as they try to head off passage of Boehner’s two-stage debt ceiling bill."

They don't want to head off passage of the Boehner bill. They want the Boehner bill to pass in the house. There's a trap essentially that's being set, and I noticed that there's an AP story, and way down at the AP story: "In fact, Boehner's plan has enough in common with Reid's -- including the establishment of a special congressional panel to recommend additional spending cuts this fall -- that Reid hinted a compromise could be easy to snap together," between his nonexistent bill and the Boehner bill. What does that mean? What it means is that over in the Senate Reid really doesn't have a bill. He's got an idea, but he doesn't have a bill. And what he's put forth as an idea hasn't gotten all that much support. But here comes, let's say the House, and Boehner doesn't have the votes in the House yet according to Politico. And this is key. That was as of 9:30 this morning and they're going to be working the Republican caucus all day long before the vote tonight. But, as of now, Boehner doesn't have the votes for his bill. But let's assume he gets the votes. The Boehner bill then goes to the Senate where it's dead on arrival. There are 58 senators that are going to vote against it, by design. However, they've got a bill over there now.

So Dingy Harry can take the Boehner bill and tweak it and rewrite it, make additions to it, take some things out of it, play with it however he wants, and get enough votes from Democrats since it becomes the Reid bill, and then it gets sent back to Boehner in the House looking nothing like his bill, but the rationale for passing the Boehner bill in the House is we've got to do this, the time is up, we're not going to get blamed. So if Reid monkeys around with the bill that he gets from Boehner, and it passes in the Senate, with whatever changes that are not favorable to us, of course, they throw it back in Boehner's lap, and then the pressure is going to be back on Boehner. Okay, do you sign the Reid bill? Do you pass it? Do you get your guys to vote for it and send it to Obama, basically a Democrat bill. That is what a lot of people -- and I sign on to the theory, too -- this is one of the traps that's being set. The Boehner bill is essentially being used to be a foundation for a nonexistent as of yet Reid bill. And thereby the Boehner bill becomes the Reid bill, therefore Democrat bill all in the absence of an Obama plan. No Obama plan at all in this.

There's no Obama bill. There's nothing set down on paper. So the Reid bill will become the Obama bill. The Boehner plan will become the Obama plan. I think that's the trap. And, of course, the establishment, Republicans are all gung ho. "Gotta get this done. It's the best we can get." Because they're telling themselves there aren't any tax increases in it, and there aren't. There aren't any tax increases in the Boehner bill. And there are spending cuts and there are caps, but what happens when that goes over to the Senate and Reid says, "You know what, I like some of this and I don't like that. Let's take some of this out and put some of this in," and gets his votes for it and the Boehner bill becomes something unrecognizable, then goes back to the House, what are they going to do? They've already passed the Boehner bill under the guise that we can't wait any longer, that AAA credit rating is in jeopardy, all this rotgut BS.

So that, essentially, is where things stand. Now, back to this Daily Caller story. The one thing in the Boehner bill, and Democrats don't like this, is that the debt ceiling doesn't get raised enough to get us through the 2012 election. In other words, the Boehner bill is not a full-fledged Obama Reelection Lifeline Bill. But that's what Reid wants to turn it into. Now they're attacking that aspect of the Boehner bill by saying that the Republicans want to destroy Christmas. "House Speaker and national grinch John Boehner is planing [sic] to spoil Christmas, White House officials are claiming, as they try to head off passage of Boehner's two-stage debt ceiling bill.

"'Happy Holidays[,] America: Boehner plan would have the debt ceiling all over again during the holiday season, which is critical for the economy,' White House deputy spokesman Dan Pfeiffer declared today at 9.50 a.m." Now, the Boehner bill would carry us through next March or April -- or at least, the last time the Speaker spoke to us that's what he told us, that there would be enough of an increase in the debt ceiling to get us through the spring. "White House political adviser David Plouffe made the same claim about Christmas almost one hour earlier when MSNBC’s [F.] Chuck Todd quizzed him about the White House’s opposition to Boehner’s two-stage debt ceiling proposal. ...

"White House spokesman Jay Carney repeated the same theme at his midday press conference. A two-stage plan that extends the debt ceiling only until 'the holiday season,' he said, 'would almost certainly require almost all of us to go through this again at the end of the year, the most important economic season of the country.'" Democrats are pulling out all rhetorical stops. Pelosi said this morning, "What we're trying to do is save the world from the Republican budget. We're trying to save life on this planet as we know it today." That's Pelosi. The CBO has scored both of these bills in such a way as to make it seem like there's very little difference between them, spending cut-wise, the Reid and Boehner bills.

There are real differences, but we're supposed to just look at the numbers and say, "Oh, they're that close? Then let's just split the difference." When is the last time you heard that the Boehner bill was very close to the Reid bill? I've never heard that until today -- and they're not close! The Reid bill counts all kinds of "savings" from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and all kinds of mumbo jumbo in there that Boehner's bill doesn't have. What is such a victory in there being no tax increases in the Reid debt ceiling deal? When in the history of the country has there ever been a tax increase included in the debt ceiling increase? We've mentioned this before: No debt ceiling increase bill has ever had a tax increase in it, yet this is being heralded as something unprecedented.

It's not. It's common. There's never a tax increase in a debt ceiling bill. There could be in this one, though, because the Boehner bill sets up this commission of unnamed members. They could do whatever they want. It's claimed that they can't do tax increases, but nothing's going to stop them if they want to. So the question that we have to ask is: Where is Republican victory in the Reid bill? Where is the victory in there being no tax increases in the Reid debt ceiling deal, because there never have been. So that's where we are (at least that's where I think we are) and they are really hustling and they are twisting arms on the Republican side. They're using phrases like, "Get your ass in line." They are saying, "Don't let ideological purity stand in the way."

Boehner said the same thing before the TARP vote. He said the exact same thing. He wasn't Speaker then but before the TARP vote in 2000 he said, "It's crucial. We're at a pressure point in the country where we can't let ideological purity stand in the right thing to do." They're saying the same thing now to the Republican freshmen in the House. "You can't let ideological purity stand in the way of doing the right thing. We've got to do this now," and their reasoning basically, when you boil it all down, is, "We've got to do something, no matter what it is, so we don't get blamed for not doing anything." So that's where we are as I, El Rushbo, see it. I'd love to be wrong. I love being right, as you well know, but I would love to be wrong. There are no real spending cuts in either bill. We went through that yesterday the baseline and all that. There are no real cuts, and certainly not at all in the Reid bill. So we shall see.